New Renaissance Prizes offered to encourage Energy experimenters

[WilbyInebriated]

Bravo!   ;] Very admirable.  ;]   I will pray for you.   Its my thing.

Mags

twiddle your thumbs while you're at it too will ya?

may the flying spaghetti monster (sauce be upon him) bless you with his saucyness and forever touch you with his noodly appendage... ramen.

[ramset]

Nice to have an opinion...............

[DreamThinkBuild]

It doesn't matter what people believe in as long as that belief inspires them to do great things. I believe Dr. Steven Jones is doing a commendable job by offering to reward others at his expense and with his family heirlooms. Steven, your father would be proud and your doing a great service, keep up the good work.

[ramset]

Dreamthinkbuild


I completely agree !!


It is my opinion that men Who believe there is more to this world than meets the eye [and then some]


Men with families and faith [[Not in Pasta]!!
Are much more likely to be the men that change this world ,..............and I do firmly believe we do that work here!!


Chet

[WilbyInebriated]

firstly, with regard to defending and upholding reason, gawd need not be disproven for theism to be shown to be unreasonable. all that needs to be done is to show that belief in a gawd â€" especially a particular gawd â€" has not been substantiated. similarly, one need not demonstrate the non-existence of martian overlords living below the surface of sweden in order to demonstrate that belief in such a proposition is silly.

secondly, regarding live and let live with regard to religion. i can understand how one would come to this conclusion. however, i don’t think this is something we should just be silent about. the reason being that these beliefs are not simply private personal matters. these beliefs really do affect the way individuals, groups and societies think and behave. religion played massive roles in the following things: defending slavery, motivating and justifying murder, abusive and oppression of gays, women, apostates, nonbelievers, believers of other faith, and other races, motivating and/or justifying terrorism, interfering with scientific research (e.g., stem cell research) and polluting scientific education (creationism, intelligent design), discouraging some from seeking or providing medical treatment or preventative treatments for self, children or others, etc. furthermore, our excusing of the unreason that we call religion has opened the floodgates for either types for other opportunistic attempts to exploit people’s trustworthiness and “openmindedness” â€" e.g., the cult of scientology, homeopathy, psychics, overunity and so on.

the idea that religious beliefs are simply personal is 100% untrue. live and let live is hardly justified when religious communities are consistent offenders and consistently affect people in rationally and morally indefensible ways.


and finally, we DO know prayer doesn’t work...

the templeton foundation sponsored a study (american heart journal 151:4, 2006, 934-42) wherein 1802 coronary bypass patients were divided into 3 groups â€" group 1 received prayers for quick recovery and no complications but did not know it, group 2 (control group) received no prayers, and group 3 received prayers and did know it.

the results were clear cut â€" there was NO DIFFERENCE in the recovery of those who received prayers and those who did not.

interestingly, there WAS a difference between groups 1 and 3 however â€" group 3 patients had significantly more complications (performance anxiety?)

now i agree the study is kind of lame... after all recovering from heart surgery happens all the time. i would prefer to see a study like the one i alluded to earlier with an amputee... but you 'faithers' and i both know that will never happen... right?